Honeymoon, Day 2: High Desert Museum

On our way from Prairie Campground to the third campground on our honeymoon itinerary, Wildcat, we stopped at the High Desert Museum 7.5 miles south of Bend. A huge sign north of La Pine announced its presence, and both Sarah and I were interested in checking it out.

We took the road off Highway 97 leading to the High Desert Museum to be greeted by the sight of a huge teepee. Following the road further, a large wagon came into view. It turns out, according to the sign, that this wagon is the last one to travel the Oregon Trail. Roy J. Brabham created a replica of a wagon in 1959 and used it to follow the same path that his ancestors took to come to Oregon.

Outside the museum, there was wildlife aplenty—from chipmunks begging for food to fish swimming the creek leading into the wildlife preserves within the museum itself. In addition, several sculptures of wildlife adorn the paths leading to the entrance of the museum from the parking lot.

The price for the museum was quite spendy—$15 a piece—but the ticket price lasts all day. The man at the front desk told us all we had to do was show our receipt to prove we’d already paid.

So we paid the $30 to get in, although we didn’t have much time to visit the entire museum. I stopped at the Birds of Prey wing of the museum, where I saw my first ever bald eagle. In addition, I watched a presentation given by one of the employees of the High Desert Museum about one of its inhabitants—a Great

Horned Owl. I was not able to retain much of the information shared in the presentation, as I spent most of my time trying to get a decent shot of the owl.

Sarah and I checked out other parts of the museum together. We passed by a sleeping bobcat and a lynx. The lynx’s story was sad. He had been found in the wild

declawed with his canine
teeth removed. They believe that someone had taken him in as a pet, and then got bored with him and left him in the wild to die. Fortunately, the High Desert Museum adopted him or that would have been his fate, being unable to defend himself.

Finally we visited the Spirit of the West wing of the museum. They displayed all sorts of old artifacts from the Old West—from Native American to settlers, gold mines to frontier towns. They also had a volcano exhibit, detailing a ton of information about volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, we were not able to take in all the sights we wanted—we had a long drive to Wildcat and needed to stop in Bend to restock on supplies. However, we definitely want to go back again someday soon.